Week 2 Personal Learning Environment

The biggest project in week 2 for me is to figure out my “PLE”.

From “A bridge in the cloud” presentation, I understood PLE is a system that helps learners take control of and manage their own learning. This includes providing support for learners to

•         Set their own learning goals
•        Manage their learning
•        Communicate with others

On the other hand, Personal Learning Network (PLN) is a network of people you connect with for the specific purpose of learning”  (Tobin,1998, as cited in Lalonde, C. 2012).

Both PLE and PLN have given a very clear direction to my own learning goal. I started to ask myself, ‘where was I?’ and ‘where did I go?’

I have always been a planner, however, in week 2, I developed a personal learning environment and that gave me a better picture of how and where I can improve learning.

My PLE starts with a learning goal. I believe education will be meaningless if we don’t know what we want to achieve and where am I now? Here are my goals for this course:

·         To research and learn different kind of tools that would help me using the digital resources effectively.

·         To build my online reading habit.

·         To share and expand my own knowledge with my friends, instructor and colleagues using various web tools.

I understand that I need supports to achieve the goals that I set up and so the next step is to gather information. Communication, references and internet resources are where I can get plenty information.

After I gather what I need, is the learning process. Take notes, brainstorming, discuss … are all common method for me to digest what I want to learn, however , I am sure there will be more to add in this part of PLE through my learning journey. Looking forward….

I believe if I can handle these digital tools, web resources, reference, and communication platform well enough, I will be able to apply and reflect on my work and also to share with other. And the most important is keep reflecting and hopefully that will being my PLE to the next level.

Achieve a learning goal is not the end point of my PLE (actually, there is no destination when it comes to learning) Growing a PLE is to make CHANGES, from DON’T KNOE to KNOW HOW, and I can imagine how much support and resources I would need to set a learning goal, achieve it and generate a new one, seems like there’s no end…By the way, this is not PLE, for me it is PLC…. Personal Learning Cycle.